My experience is that popular culture tends to cheapen love (that leads to
marriage) by describing it as something that is completely emotional or
sexual in nature. It becomes something that seeks the moment and temporal
joys/feelings that exist at the time. For example, one first sees a beautiful
person, so what happens? They can fall prey to a shallow understanding that
this person is beautiful not only on the outside, but also the inside. The
next thing they know, they are lost in a careless river of emotion, driving
them toward future pain and suffering. Although someone who lacks internal
beauty still is to be loved, they cannot be joined in marriage because marriage
is a bond that makes both one. If they remain separate, the marriage is
incomplete. If an internally beautiful person is married to an internally
ugly person, the union is less than beautiful.

Society sometimes even pushes that it doesn't matter what the internal
beauties are, it all has to do with an emotion called love. So, if this
emotion is fickle, so is love fickle. The variability of love makes it quite
cheap as people have sex with multiple partners, divorce and remarry multiple
times, and never spend the time necessary to deepen that love.

The Richest of Loves

I stand here watching as the people go by,
My grand fear taking in the picture so sly.

* - I think this verse may be quite difficult to follow. Power
refers to the desire for power over someone else that can fuel shallow
love relationships. When the relationship is felt to be a drain,
the love disappeares.
Joshua Cantrell